prof.dr.ir. M. Aksit (Mehmet)

PERSONAL DATA:

• Currently, he is setting up a research LAB on Digital Management of Disasters at AFAD Presidency in Ankara, Turkey.
• He has worked as a full professor at the TOBB Economics and technology University in Ankara Turkey from January 2020 to June 2022.
• Coordinator of the Alliance on Digital Management of Pandemic Disasters
  (https://admpd.etu.edu.tr/en.;
  
• Guest staff member at the Un. of Twente, emeritus full professor;
• Worked as a full Professor from November 2000 to October 2019;
• He was the Software Engineering Chair Holder;
• m.aksit (at) utwente.nl ; http://fmt.cs.utwente.nl/ ;
• Citations: 17267 (Google scholar September 14, 2020); H-index: 35 ; I10-index: 101;

SHORT BIO:

Mehmet Akșit has received an electrical engineering degree from the Ankara Engineering Academy (1976), electrical engineering B.Sc. and MSc. degrees (Ir.) from the Technical University of Eindhoven with honours (1980), and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Twente (1989). Dr. Akșit and the members his group have contributed to various topics in software engineering, such as programming languages, software design, application frameworks, software quality attributes and university-industry cooperation. As for programming languages, the group has developed one of the first aspect-oriented languages called Composition-Filters. Also, a language that can explicitly represent emergent behavior has been developed. The group has introduced the synthesis based software design methods and fuzzy-probabilistic techniques for modeling uncertainty in software design processes. Various methods and techniques have been defined to enhance certain quality attributes of software such as  adaptability, evolvability, documentability, availability, traceability, relevancy, energy reducibility and  schedulability. Accordingly, multi-criteria trade-off techniques have been introduced to optimize software architectures. Since 2011, the group has been developing new company maturity models and processes so that companies can be conscious about the capabilities and competences they need. In 2017, Dr. Akșit has received the SDPS Priscilla and Raymond T. Yeh Award for Lifetime Achievements in Software Research, Technology Innovation or Engineering Education. Currently, Dr. Akșit is establishing a research center on 'Digital Management of Disasters' at AFAD Presidency in Ankara, Turkey.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES (Digital Management of Disasters)

THE PROBLEM: Existing earthquake management systems are ineffective and inefficient due to largely manual collection and processing of data!  

THE APPROACH: 

Automated knowledge extraction from households.

IoT-based data gathering via resilient critical infrastructures.

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS:

Programming languages:

• In 1988, (probably the first) aspect-oriented language called Sina was developed. This work was later evolved into the concept of Composition Filters (1992). Various languages adopted this concept (ComposeJ, Compose*, etc.). Compose* was the most advanced language among these. It was implemented on various platforms. It had some unique features such as language independence, “interface-programming”, domain specific aspects and incorporated a set of verification tools. 
• We organized the first Aspect-Oriented Software Development conference (AOSD2002) and I was the co-editor of the first aspect-oriented journal. 
• Between 2010 – today, new language abstractions (Event Composition Modules, the Gummy programming language) were developed to abstract event-based programs. A particular interest was to modularly represent so-called “emergent behavior”. We are currently working on a new paradigm called: Optimal Programming.

Software design:

• In the 90’s, the synthesis based architecture/software design method was developed; This method adopts controlled problem solving techniques in mapping requirements to software architectural solutions.
  
• In the 90’s, a fuzzy-logic based technique for modeling uncertainty in software design processes was developed. Later, this technique was extended with fuzzy-probabilistic methods and applied to software process- and product-optimization problems. 
  
• We are currently working on so-called Optimal Modeling Language and Framework.

Product-line and/or software architectures/application frameworks:

• Since 1990’s, various industrial projects have been carried out with companies to design and implement application specific libraries, product-line architectures, application frameworks, domain-specific languages, etc. Examples are:
  
• Since 2015, product-line architectures, model-driven engineering tools and application generators have been defined and implemented to support software systems which incorporate schedulers (designed specifically for the company Aselsan).
  
• As 2018, we were told that every lithography machine produced by the company ASML (owns about 70% of the world market) has a subsystem that was originally designed and implement by my research team.
  
• Other examples are design of various architectures for insurance-management systems, car-dealer management systems, medical-systems, communication-media charging systems, etc.

Enhancing software quality attributes:

New design formalisms were developed to evaluate various software quality attributes. For this purpose, around the year 2000, the concept of Design Algebra was introduced. Later, new software metrics for were defined and appropriate tools were built. Examples are:

• Metrics for adaptability and evolvability were first specified and verified using Design Algebra. Later, graph algebras, temporal-logic and predicate-based specification languages were introduced. 
• The quality attribute documentability was specified, verified and enforced by a new concept called context-sensitive wildcards as adopted by the language VisuaL. 
• The quality attribute fault-tolerance was provided by dedicated local recovery techniques. The quality attribute availability was specified and verified by the help of special tools based on information obtained from source code analysis. 
• The quality attribute integrate-ability was specified and verified with the help of graph-based and resource-model based techniques. 
• The quality attribute traceability was investigated by using dedicated meta models that could represent and reason about the design context. 
• The quality attribute relevancy was specified and verified with the help of fuzzy-probabilistic models.
• The quality attribute energy-reduction was modeled and enhanced through the use of dedicated architecture and domain-specific languages. 
• Various quality trade-off techniques were investigated by using single and multi-criteria optimization techniques.

University – Industry cooperation methods: 

• Since 2011, as a team, we have been developing new “university – industry cooperation” methods. Along this line, company maturity models and processes have been defined.
• This method aims at enhancing the capabilities of high-technology companies so that they can accomplish their strategic objectives in a timely manner. 
• Since 2011, as a team we have been working extensively with 5 very large high-technology companies to enhance their technological capabilities.